1.
Gabon
–
Gabon, officially the Gabonese Republic, is a sovereign state on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, Gabon is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo on the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of nearly 270,000 square kilometres and its capital and largest city is Libreville. Since its independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had three presidents, in the early 1990s, Gabon introduced a multi-party system and a new democratic constitution that allowed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed many governmental institutions. Gabon was also a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2010–2011 term. GDP grew by more than 6% per year from 2010 to 2012, however, because of inequality in income distribution, a significant proportion of the population remains poor. Gabons name originates from gabão, Portuguese for cloak, which is roughly the shape of the estuary of the Komo River by Libreville, the earliest inhabitants of the area were Pygmy peoples. They were largely replaced and absorbed by Bantu tribes as they migrated, in the 15th century, the first Europeans arrived. By the 18th century, a Myeni speaking kingdom known as Orungu formed in Gabon, on February 10,1722, Bartholomew Roberts, a Welsh pirate known as Black Bart, died at sea off Cape Lopez. He raided ships off the Americas and West Africa from 1719 to 1722, French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875. He founded the town of Franceville, and was later colonial governor, several Bantu groups lived in the area that is now Gabon when France officially occupied it in 1885. In 1910, Gabon became one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa, in World War II, the Allies invaded Gabon in order to overthrow the pro-Vichy France colonial administration. The territories of French Equatorial Africa became independent on August 17,1960, the first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon Mba, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as his vice president. However, when Mba dissolved the National Assembly in January 1964 to institute one-party rule, French paratroopers flew in within 24 hours to restore Mba to power. After a few days of fighting, the coup ended and the opposition was imprisoned, French soldiers still remain in the Camp de Gaulle on the outskirts of Gabons capital to this day. When MBa died in 1967, Bongo replaced him as president, in March 1968, Bongo declared Gabon a one-party state by dissolving the BDG and establishing a new party—the Parti Democratique Gabonais. He invited all Gabonese, regardless of political affiliation, to participate. Bongo was elected President in February 1975, in April 1975, the position of president was abolished and replaced by the position of prime minister

2.
Language family
–
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others

3.
Bantoid languages
–
In the classification of African languages, Bantoid is a putative branch of the Benue–Congo branch of the Niger–Congo family. The term Bantoid was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu. Greenberg in his 1963 The Languages of Africa defined Bantoid as the group to which Bantu belongs together with its closest relatives, the Bantoid languages probably do not actually form a coherent group. A proposal that divided Bantoid into North and South Bantoid was introduced in Williamson, in this proposal, the Mambiloid and Dakoid languages are grouped together as North Bantoid, while everything else Bantoid is subsumed under South Bantoid, the Ethnologue uses this classification. The legitimacy of the North Bantoid group is questionable, and the Dakoid languages are now placed outside Bantoid. Southern Bantoid includes the known and numerous Bantu subfamily. Blench, Roger A new classification of Bantoid languages, unpublished paper presented at 17th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden. In, The Niger–Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger Niger–Congo, in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek African Languages – An Introduction. Cambridge, Cambridge University press, pp. 11–42, kirill Babaev, Reconstructing Bantoid Pronouns Journal of West African Languages, Bantoid languages

4.
Bantu languages
–
The Bantu languages, technically the Narrow Bantu languages, constitute a traditional branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families, the Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili, however, the majority of its speakers know it as a second language. According to Ethnologue, there are over 180 million L2 speakers, other major languages include Zulu with 27 million speakers and Shona with about 11 million speakers. Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, the Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in West Africa. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, the technical term Bantu, meaning human beings or simply people, was first used by Wilhelm Bleek, as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the structures of Bantu languages. In recent times, the distinctiveness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid groups has been called into doubt, a coherent classification of Narrow Bantu will likely need to exclude many of the Zone A and perhaps Zone B languages. There is no true genealogical classification of the Bantu languages, the most widely used classification, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Guthrie, is mainly geographic. The two groups have described as having mirror-image tone systems, where Northwest Bantu has a high tone in a cognate, Central Bantu languages generally have a low tone. Northwest Bantu is clearly not a coherent family, but even for Central Bantu the evidence is lexical, another attempt at a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system is the 1999 Tervuren proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann. This has been criticized for sowing confusion in one of the few ways to distinguish Bantu languages. Nurse & Philippson evaluate many proposals for low-level groups of Bantu languages, glottolog has incorporated many of these into their classification. The languages that share Dahls Law may also form a valid group, the infobox at right lists these together with various low-level groups that are fairly uncontroversial, though they continue to be revised. The development of a rigorous genealogical classification of many branches of Niger–Congo, Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the vocabulary of Proto-Bantu. The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the use of affixes. Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have several numbered classes, the class is indicated by a prefix that is part of the noun, as well as agreement markers on verb and qualificative roots connected with the noun. Plural is indicated by a change of class, with a change of prefix

5.
Guthrie classification of Bantu languages
–
The 250 or so Narrow Bantu languages are conventionally divided up into geographic zones first proposed by Malcolm Guthrie. These were assigned letters A–S and divided into decades, individual languages were assigned unit numbers, only Guthries Zone S is considered to be a genealogical group, since then a Zone J has been set up as another possible genealogical group bordering the Great Lakes. The list is first summarized, with links to articles on accepted groups of Bantu languages, Following that is the complete 1948 list, as updated by Guthrie in 1971 and by Maho in 2009. The list below reflects Guthrie as updated by Maho, not included in detail are the Northeast Bantu languages characterized by Dahls Law, which is thought to be a genealogical group, cuts across the Guthrie system, and is covered at Northeast Bantu. Other groups with dedicated articles, such as Southern Bantu are also only summarized here, so that the listing is only a summary. Note that Ethnologue made multiple changes to Guthrie in an attempt to make the more historically accurate. However, the changes are inconsistent, and Ethnologue has not been followed here, thus a code may mean different things depending on whether Guthrie or SIL is being followed. The updates in Maho, on the hand, are designed to be compatible with the original values of the codes. Accepted genealogical groups within the Guthrie zones are boldfaced, S Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, N Gabon A10 Lundu–Balong, Oroko, the other languages apart from A15 Manenguba may be Sawabantu as well. Guthries A60 and part of his A40 have been removed to the Southern Bantoid Mbam languages, Sawabantu may include some of the A10 languages apart from Manenguba, whereas Bube may belong in Mbam. Southern Bantoid Jarawan was assigned to Zone A by Gerhardt and Blench, specifically to A60, according to several scholars, including Blench, there can be no coherent concept of Bantu as long as many of the Zone A and perhaps Zone B languages are included. B10–30 may belong together as Kele–Tsogo, B40 with Kongo–Yaka, there are proposals for three larger clades, Mboshi–Buja covering C10–20 and C37+41, and Bangi–Tetela covering C30 with C50–80, and C40a together with D20–30 in Boan. Most of D40–60 has been moved to Great Lakes Bantu languages, lengola, Bodo, and Nyali may belong together as Lebonya, and Beeke in Boan. F10 Tongwe-Bende F30 Mbugwe–Rangi languages. Isanzu Much of F20 and F30, including the major language Sukuma, have been reclassified as Northeast Bantu, Mbugwe–Rangi, however, form a valid node by themselves. Isanzu is sometimes classified as F30, as a variety of Nilamba, E Tanzania, Comoros G50 Kilombero The languages of Zone G have been reclassified, G60 Bene–Kinga to Northeast Bantu, and the other branches more specifically to Northeast Coast Bantu languages. NW Angola, W Congo H10 Kongo languages H20 Kimbundu languages H30–40 Yaka languages H10 and H40 are sometimes considered Forest Bantu, H10 Kunyi, Suundi, and Vili have been split between B40 and L10. H40 is split between H30 and L10, Kongo–Yaka may form a family, perhaps with B40 Sira. Uganda, Rwanda–Burundi, near lakes Kivu & Victoria J Great Lakes E Angola, k43 Mbukushu K20 Lozi is now classified as Southern Bantu

6.
Bantu language
–
The Bantu languages, technically the Narrow Bantu languages, constitute a traditional branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families, the Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili, however, the majority of its speakers know it as a second language. According to Ethnologue, there are over 180 million L2 speakers, other major languages include Zulu with 27 million speakers and Shona with about 11 million speakers. Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, the Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in West Africa. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, the technical term Bantu, meaning human beings or simply people, was first used by Wilhelm Bleek, as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the structures of Bantu languages. In recent times, the distinctiveness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid groups has been called into doubt, a coherent classification of Narrow Bantu will likely need to exclude many of the Zone A and perhaps Zone B languages. There is no true genealogical classification of the Bantu languages, the most widely used classification, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Guthrie, is mainly geographic. The two groups have described as having mirror-image tone systems, where Northwest Bantu has a high tone in a cognate, Central Bantu languages generally have a low tone. Northwest Bantu is clearly not a coherent family, but even for Central Bantu the evidence is lexical, another attempt at a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system is the 1999 Tervuren proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann. This has been criticized for sowing confusion in one of the few ways to distinguish Bantu languages. Nurse & Philippson evaluate many proposals for low-level groups of Bantu languages, glottolog has incorporated many of these into their classification. The languages that share Dahls Law may also form a valid group, the infobox at right lists these together with various low-level groups that are fairly uncontroversial, though they continue to be revised. The development of a rigorous genealogical classification of many branches of Niger–Congo, Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the vocabulary of Proto-Bantu. The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the use of affixes. Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have several numbered classes, the class is indicated by a prefix that is part of the noun, as well as agreement markers on verb and qualificative roots connected with the noun. Plural is indicated by a change of class, with a change of prefix

7.
Ethnologue
–
Ethnologue, Languages of the World is a web-based publication that contains information about the 7,099 living languages in its 20th edition, which was released in 2017. The publication is well respected and widely used by linguists, Ethnologue is published by SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas, Texas. Ethnologue follows general linguistic criteria, which are based primarily on mutual intelligibility, shared language intelligibility features are complex, and usually include etymological and grammatical evidence that is agreed upon by experts. These lists of names are not necessarily complete, in 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an SIL code, to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded the scope of other standards, e. g. ISO 639-1, the 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization to integrate its codes into an international standard. The 15th edition of Ethnologue was the first edition to use this standard and this standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue according to rules established by ISO, and since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. e. A language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity, in December 2015, Ethnologue launched a soft paywall, users in high-income countries who want to refer to more than seven pages of data per month must buy a paid subscription. Ethnologues 18th edition describes 228 language families and six typological categories, in 1986, William Bright, then editor of the journal Language, wrote of Ethnologue that it is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world. In 2008 in the journal, Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona said, Ethnologue. has become the standard reference. However, he concluded that, on balance, Ethnologue is a comprehensive catalogue of world languages. Starting with the 17th edition, new editions of Ethnologue are to be published every year, linguasphere Observatory Register Glottolog Lists of languages List of language families Martin Everaert, Simon Musgrave, Alexis Dimitriadis, eds. The Use of Databases in Cross-Linguistic Studies, linguistic Genocide in Education-or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights. Evaluating language statistics, the Ethnologue and beyond